TY - JOUR
T1 - To Test or Not to Test
T2 - Tools, Rules, and Corporate Data in US Chemicals Regulation
AU - Creager, Angela N.H.
N1 - Funding Information:
For helpful comments on versions of this paper, I thank George Aumoithe, David Berol, Haris Durrani, Dov Grohsgal, Emmanuel Henry, Evan Hepler-Smith, Myles Jackson, Colleen Lanier-Christensen, Rachel Rothschild, Barbara Welke, and Valentin Thomas; attendees of the “Pervasive Powers” conference in Paris in June 2018; members of Princeton’s History of Science Program Seminar; the 2018-2019 “Law & Legalities” fellows in the Davis Center at Princeton; scholars at “Practicing Evidence—Evidencing Practice” in Munich 2020; and three anonymous referees of the journal. I gratefully acknowledge fellowship support from the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, where I completed this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.
PY - 2021/9
Y1 - 2021/9
N2 - When the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) was passed by the US Congress in 1976, its advocates pointed to new generation of genotoxicity tests as a way to systematically screen chemicals for carcinogenicity. However, in the end, TSCA did not require any new testing of commercial chemicals, including these rapid laboratory screens. In addition, although the Environmental Protection Agency was to make public data about the health effects of industrial chemicals, companies routinely used the agency’s obligation to protect confidential business information to prevent such disclosures. This paper traces the contested history of TSCA and its provisions for testing, from the circulation of the first draft bill in the Nixon administration through the debates over its implementation, which stretched into the Reagan administration. The paucity of publicly available health and environmental data concerning chemicals, I argue, was a by-product of the law and its execution, leading to a situation of institutionalized ignorance, the underside of regulatory knowledge.
AB - When the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) was passed by the US Congress in 1976, its advocates pointed to new generation of genotoxicity tests as a way to systematically screen chemicals for carcinogenicity. However, in the end, TSCA did not require any new testing of commercial chemicals, including these rapid laboratory screens. In addition, although the Environmental Protection Agency was to make public data about the health effects of industrial chemicals, companies routinely used the agency’s obligation to protect confidential business information to prevent such disclosures. This paper traces the contested history of TSCA and its provisions for testing, from the circulation of the first draft bill in the Nixon administration through the debates over its implementation, which stretched into the Reagan administration. The paucity of publicly available health and environmental data concerning chemicals, I argue, was a by-product of the law and its execution, leading to a situation of institutionalized ignorance, the underside of regulatory knowledge.
KW - chemicals
KW - environmental practices
KW - law
KW - markets/economies
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U2 - 10.1177/01622439211013373
DO - 10.1177/01622439211013373
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85105957205
SN - 0162-2439
VL - 46
SP - 975
EP - 997
JO - Science Technology and Human Values
JF - Science Technology and Human Values
IS - 5
ER -